1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a composition for suppressing behavior problems of pets, and a method for suppressing behavior problems of pets using the same.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
With the popularity of owning a pet and the change of the housing situations of recent years, the method of keeping a pet has been changed. For example, regarding a dog, while it was kept as a watch dog or a hunting dog in the past, it has now been kept indoors as an indoor dog. Similarly, regarding a cat, while it was kept mainly out of the house in the past, it has now been kept mainly indoors. Also, how an owner values a pet has changed: Thinking of a pet as a companion animal that the pet is regarded as a member of family has been infiltrated in the people's mind.
Because of such changes, there arises a new disease, namely behavior problems associated with failure in pet breeding and training for keeping it indoors and also with old age.
For example, regarding the indoor dogs, there have been known to show behaviors such as attack, destruction, inappropriate elimination, licking their paws repeatedly, and excess barking. Also, regarding the cats, there have been known to show behaviors such as inappropriate elimination and scratching.
As a means to suppress these behavior problems, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. Hei 2-308737 discloses a technique relating to an automatic training device for pets to regulate the behavior automatically such that an animal such as a pet does not go out of a certain area. However, the device has a complicated structure with a defect of complicated operation, and is undesirable from the viewpoint of protecting an animal from harm since a high voltage is applied to a pet which shows abnormal behaviors.
Also, pet owners have been instructed to ignore a dog from about 30 minutes before going out, namely to give no attention for the dog at all, and further to ignore behaviors of the dog such as gladly licking and jumping when the pet owners return home until the dog calms down. However, such a therapeutic method could be easily understood to mean that the pet owner should not have any contact with the dog at all, and when such understanding is made, the symptoms of behavior problems are likely to get rather worse.
Further, there are proposed administration of an anti-anxiety agent, a hormone agent, a tranquilizer, a sedative, an anti-epileptic agent and a pheromone as the pharmacotherapy. However, since there are problems of side effects and stresses of the pet arising from the administration of the pharmaceuticals, these proposals have not yet came into practical use.
Declaw, cutting off the claw of cat, has a problem from the viewpoint of protecting an animal from harm, and therefore is not practiced in most case.
An object of the present invention is to provide a composition for suppressing behavior problems of pets which cannot be effectively solved by the conventional methods, and a method for suppressing behavior problems using it.
The above and other objects of the present invention will be apparent from the following description.